Doug wrote:
In view of my infrequent repairs and my limited knowledge of
electricity (tho I can learn), what is a recommended digital
multimeter and where to buy? I have no idea what my budget is but for
starters lets say $100 (estimate). I had a old analog one but it's
old and right now I can't find it so I'm willing to buy new.

Also, when I read one ad, it said the digital multimeter didn't need
to make contact with the diode? Not sure what this means? You
still need to have I assume 2 wires to touch the things in question,
right, so the meter can read the differences?

Harbor Freight sells one for about a buck-ninety-eight. It's more than
adequate to determine if a wire is hot, open windings in a motor, and other
simple inquiries.

If you need to determine the voltage drop across an inductor under load so
you can compute the reactive capacitance of fluxations in the galactic core,
the HF model is probably not the instrument of choice.